UN Human Rights Institutions and the Environment


Book Description

This book presents an in-depth analysis of how UN human rights institutions and mechanisms have addressed environmental protection, sustainable development, and climate change. Despite the increasing involvement of UN human rights bodies in addressing environmental degradation and climate change, a systematic review of the convergence between human rights and the environment in these bodies has not been carried out. Filing this lacuna, this book surveys the resolutions, general comments, concluding observations, decisions on individual communications and press releases. It identifies principles that have emerged, explores the ways in which human rights charter-based and treaty-based institutions are interpreting environmental principles and examines how they contribute to the emerging field of human rights and the environment. Given the disproportionate effect that polluting activities have on marginalized and vulnerable groups, Atapattu also discusses how these human rights mechanisms have addressed the impact on women, children, indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, and racial minorities. Written by a world-renowned expert on human rights and the environment, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars researching and teaching in this important field of study.




Social Institutions and International Human Rights Law Implementation


Book Description

Having articulated numerous human rights norms and standards in international treaties, the pressing challenge today is their realisation in States' parties around the world. Domestic implementation has proven a difficult task for national authorities as well as international supervisory bodies. This book examines the traditional State-centric and legalistic approach to implementation, critiquing its limited efficacy in practice and failure to connect with local cultures. The book therefore explores the permissibility of other measures of implementation, and advocates more culturally sensitive approaches involving social institutions. Through an interdisciplinary case study of Islam in Indonesia, the book demonstrates the power of social institutions like religion to promote rights compliant positions and behaviours. Like the preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the book reiterates the role not just of the State but indeed 'every organ of society' in realising rights.




Caribbean Anti-Trafficking Law and Practice


Book Description

This monograph investigates the International, European and Commonwealth Caribbean approaches to human trafficking from an Analytical Eclectic perspective. It presents a compelling, empirically based argument that although there is currently a panoply of measures aimed at preventing human trafficking, prosecuting offenders and protecting trafficked victims in both Europe and the Commonwealth Caribbean, these measures have in practice been fraught with a number of challenges, whether of a normative, institutional or individual nature. The continued existence of these challenges strongly suggests that there exists a 'disconnect' between anti-trafficking law and practice which is not peculiar to small-island developing States since they also extend to developed States, including the United Kingdom. Although these challenges are not insurmountable, this monograph advances the argument that sustained social, economic, political and legal commitments are both necessary and desirable, and that without such commitments, only pyrrhic victories would be won in the fight to eradicate the scourge of the twenty-first century. Given the importance of the issue of human trafficking and its inescapable impact on victims, families, communities, nations, regions and the international community as a whole, this monograph will serve as an important resource for policy makers, scholars, students and practitioners actively working in this increasingly dynamic area of law.




Defund the Police


Book Description

The police are viewed as guardians of public safety and enforcers of the law. How accurate is this? Given endemic police violence which is often aimed at racialised and minoritised groups and the failure of many attempts at reform, attention has turned to community-generated models of support. These include defunding the police and instead funding alternatives to criminalisation and incarceration. This book is the first comprehensive overview of police divestment, using international examples and case studies to reimagine community safety beyond policing and imprisonment. Showcasing a range of practical examples, this topical book will be relevant for academics, policy makers, activists and all those interested in the Black Lives Matter movement, protest movements and the renewed interest in policing and abolitionism more generally.




Orphanage Trafficking in International Law


Book Description

Provides the first-ever comprehensive legal analysis of orphanage trafficking in international law.




The Right of the Child to Play


Book Description

This book provides a vital and original investigation into, and critique of, the situation facing the realisation of the child’s right to play. The right to play has been referred to as a forgotten right – forgotten by States implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child, by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in monitoring and providing guidance on the Convention, and by human rights academics. Through multidisciplinary, original archival, novel doctrinal and primary empirical research, the work provides a thorough investigation of the right to play. It offers an innovative insight into its value, the challenges facing the realisation of the right, its raison d’être and its scope, content and obligations. It also critiques the Committee’s engagement with the right to play and shares lived experiences of efforts to support its implementation in the United Kingdom and Tanzania. The book highlights elements of best practice, challenges, and weaknesses, and makes recommendations for the continued and improved realisation of the right to play. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers, academics, advocates and policy-makers working in the areas of Children’s Rights, International Human Rights Law, Public International Law, Child Welfare, and Education.




Human Rights and Economic Inequalities


Book Description

Economic inequalities are among the greatest human rights challenges the world faces today due to the past four decades of neoliberal policy dominance. Globally, there are now over 2,000 billionaires, while 3.4 billion people live below the poverty line of US $5.50 per day. Many human rights scholars and practitioners read these statistics with alarm, asking what impact such extreme inequalities have on realizing human rights and what role, if any, should human rights have in challenging them? This edited volume examines these questions from multiple disciplinary perspectives, seeking to uncover the relationships between human rights and economic inequalities, and the barriers and pathways to greater economic equality and full enjoyment of human rights for all. The volume is a unique contribution to the emerging literature on human rights and economic inequality, as it is interdisciplinary, global in reach and extends to several under-researched areas in the field.




Debating Climate Law


Book Description

An innovative volume that covers all the common topics of climate law currently debated in the global academic community.




Business and Human Rights


Book Description

This book analyses the accountability of European home States for their failure to secure the human rights of victims from host States against transnational enterprises. It argues for a reconfiguration of the relationship between multinational enterprises and individuals, both of which have been profoundly changed by globalisation. Enterprises are now supranational entities with numerous affiliates all over the world. Likewise, individuals are increasingly part of a global community. Despite this, the relationship between the two is deregulated. Addressing this gap, this study proposes an innovative business and human rights litigation strategy. Human rights advocates could file a test case against a European home State, at the European Court of Human Rights, for its failure to secure the rights of victims vis-à-vis European multinational enterprises. The book illustrates why such a strategy is needed, and points to the lack of effective legal remedies against European multinationals. The goal is to empower victims from developing countries against European States which are failing to hold multinational enterprises accountable for human rights abuses.